Followers cheer within the crowd at Michaël Brun’s BAYO live performance at Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, June 15.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

Within the breezy warmth of a Brooklyn summer season night time, DJ Michaël Brun leads a jubilant crowd of 8,000 chanting: “Bayo! Bayo!” Translated from Haitian Creole, “bayo” means “To present.” It isn’t solely the identify of one among Brun’s most liked songs, it is the namesake of his yearly competition that’s taken on new that means amid its largest present but.

In years previous, Brun and his group have toured the BAYO present round cities within the US and the Caribbean, however for the 2024 version, the competition was consolidated into one night time (June 15), in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, to turn into the vacation spot occasion for the diaspora. As followers of all ages replenish the bandshell seating space and again a whole bunch of yards to the fences, Haitian, Jamaican, Guyanese and Trinidadian flags are donned as trend on the waist, the neck, the top and, naturally, as extensions of waving palms.

DJ & Music Producer Michaël Brun backstage at his Profit Live performance: Michael Brun Presents BAYO at Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, June 15, 2024.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

“When you by no means skilled what Haitian tradition, Caribbean tradition felt like, it is presupposed to be probably the most concise model of that in a single occasion,” Brun laughs. “The entire focus is on bringing pleasure.”

For Brun, that pleasure began with a collaboration again in 2016. The musician, who’s Haitian and Guyanese and grew up in Haiti, was on a visit to Gonave Island to help with a faculty’s music program. Working with the kids impressed Brun and his collaborators, Sturdy G, J Perry and Baky, to present the scholars an anthem of confidence.

“A lot of Haiti within the worldwide information and conversations folks would have concerning the nation, it was about how Haiti is impoverished, going by means of tragedy after tragedy, disaster. It was all the time damaging,” Brun says. “As someone who lives within the nation who is consistently getting this barrage of negativity about your self, conversations we had been having [when making the song], had been like, ‘There’s a lot extra to the nation than that’ and if we wished to inform that, we would as effectively put it in a track.”

“We’re saying ‘We’re supplying you with tradition, we’re supplying you with music, our story of freedom’,” Brun describes the translated lyrics. When Michaël and pals gave “Bayo” the basic automobile check after recording it, they began impromptu block events within the streets of Jacmel, Haiti. From there, he says, “we knew we had one thing.”

Now eight years in, Brun has labored to increase BAYO’s neighborhood attain with every present. Because it has grown to an annual fest, BAYO nonetheless maintains a familial, block social gathering really feel. Whereas summertime is the thick of competition season with sky-high ticket costs and crowded rosters, BAYO gives a distinct expertise for followers.

Raina Ulysse, Marjorie Ulysse, Vick Ulysse and Tiffany Ulysse (the Ulysse household) at Profit Live performance: Michaël Brun Presents BAYO at Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, June 15.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

When BAYO is introduced, Brun is the one marketed identify on the lineup and all different performers are surprises revealed the night-of. As a sought-after producer for artists from throughout genres — Latin, digital, jazz, pop — Brun operates as maestro onstage, curating a fete of acts that purposely span generations. And as a lot as the group buzzes with anticipation for who will come out throughout the present, patrons are simply as excited to embrace others within the viewers with them.

“So many people left Haiti as a result of we needed to, not as a result of we wished to,” says Rolandjhita Chavannes, who fled Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. As a fan of Brun since 2013, Chavannes says she’s been to greater than 4 BAYO excursions. “We come right here to see our relations, our pals and social gathering like we used to in Haiti and that is what’s completely different for us than some other competition. It’s coming right here yearly and seeing our folks glad, simply Haitian pleasure.”

“That isn’t one thing I noticed after I was rising up,” remembers Mireille Lemaine as she claps alongside in her garden chair. “Haitian music is large now. Haiti’s on the map. After I was a child rising up in Brooklyn within the ‘80s it wasn’t like that.”

Jeff Pereisa on the Profit Live performance: Michaël Brun Presents BAYO. “The music’s so completely different from one era [to the next]. You’ve acquired your konpa, your rara, your Rabòday,” Jeff Periera says whereas attending the live performance. “Michaël does a extremely good job of mixing all of it collectively and bringing us all collectively,” says Pereisa.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

“The actually cool factor that Michaël Brun’s in a position to do is he’s in a position to bridge the hole between older and youthful Haitians and that’s in all probability like the largest problem,” notes Jeff Periera, 35, who got here from New Jersey to attend this present, his first BAYO. “The music’s so completely different from one era [to the next]. You’ve acquired your konpa, your rara, your Rabòday… however Michaël does a extremely good job of mixing all of it collectively and bringing us all collectively.”

This yr’s lineup jumped everywhere in the globe; Haitian-American R&B newcomer Serina, Nigerian pop sensation Oxlade, hype Haitian DJ TonyMix, Jamaica’s Serani, Colombia’s J Balvin and Brooklyn-bred, neo-soul icon Maxwell.

To shut the night time, the unofficial headliner was legendary konpa ensemble Tabou Combo, who acquired an official commendation award from the Metropolis of New York in celebration of their five-decade profession and Caribbean American Heritage Month.

Legendary Haitian music group Tabou Combo performs alongside Michaël Brun.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

“Searching [into the audience] I noticed unity by means of music,” says Oxlade, who flew in from Lagos for the present. “I noticed the facility and magnitude of what we’re doing. Our job is to convey folks collectively and heal souls with this.”

The extra the solar dips beneath the tree line, the extra the bandshell string lights illuminate the waves of pleasure radiating towards the stage. Viewers cheers intensify with every new shock visitor revealed. Within the again grassy space by the merch and meals tents, pockets of the group circle up into dance events. With the range of genres and eras lined, most everybody will get to go away the night time with a brand new musical discovery.

For a rustic that’s been fractured for therefore lengthy, these moments of unity are visibly savored as a respite. As the primary island nation within the Caribbean to combat for and win their independence from France in 1804, Haiti’s folks have endured a historical past of struggles, dealing with each pure disasters and man-made energy struggles. Since 2020, ongoing political unrest, together with coup d’états and a presidential assassination, have brought about a lot of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, to turn into overrun by gangs. This yr, deaths from gang violence are reportedly surging and worldwide our bodies from the US, Africa and different Caribbean nations have pledged to intervene. In Might, Kenyan cops had been deployed to the island to push again the gangs however had been then despatched house.

“I really feel like there’s a whole lot of international meddling within the nation and because of this, that, together with political instability make what’s taking place within the capital what it’s,” explains Misha Bernier from Brooklyn, attending her third BAYO. “Due to that, that’s all we see within the information. I believe there’s a demonizing of Haiti and a concern that’s continually being pushed on us to not return and I believe we have to query, ‘Why is that? What’s the deeper motive? What’s beneath that?’ When you concern your homeland, it permits so that you can not return and possibly permits for others to return in and take it from you.”

Misha Bernier at Profit Live performance: Michaël Brun Presents BAYO on Saturday, June 15, 2024.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

Brun, at 32 years outdated, says he’s lived by means of two coup d’états and has been vocal about wanting transparency throughout authorities transitions. Within the midst of political uncertainty, he needs BAYO to be a “car” to start out a brand new story about his homeland.

“Haiti is a large nation and we, our tradition, we simply have little or no visibility,” he says. “To the purpose the place I believe that it is virtually unusual for folks to see themselves, their music onstage like this at this degree, so there’s that angle: To really feel seen.”

It’s additionally about utilizing visibility to funnel efforts into being heard. With BAYO tracing its origins again to a visit at a music college, Brun and his group work to gather a greenback from each ticket bought to donate to the Artist Institute and Pals of Matenwa, the identical college Brun visited in 2016. Brun has additionally just lately helped to discovered the central Haiti Reduction Fund web page which sends donations to Haitian-run organizations targeted on agriculture and healthcare to assist harmless folks caught within the “energy vacuum.” Brun focuses his philanthropic efforts to ensure Haitian persons are happy with their previous and, when the nation rehabilitates, in full management of their future.

Music followers increase their telephones with their flashlights turned on.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

“The folks of Haiti have continually been written out of their very own story within the international sense. I believe that’s possibly been the constant issue, truthfully because the founding of the nation,” Brun says. “I might say I am an optimist and I imagine in love as a device to ensure that change. I work onerous to be welcoming, to create areas which can be secure and which can be equitable… However that requires pressure generally, that requires stress in a route and I believe my means of doing that’s by doing these BAYO exhibits, elevating cash for these causes, making the music I make, by having conversations that possibly assist increase folks’s minds. I believe serving to folks to grasp there may be greatness and excellence from my folks and my cultures; by doing that, naturally the story can be rewritten.”

As BAYO Brooklyn wraps up hitting new attendance highs, the Rara band, a staple of any giant Haitian celebration, take Brun’s social gathering from the stage to the cement and ushers revelers out of the bandshell in a rhythm of drums and horns. Guiding the mass of individuals out onto the streets of Prospect Park West, chants of “Bayo!” and “Ayibobo! (Amen!)” prepared the ground.

The Rara band performs as followers file out of the venue on Saturday, June 15.

Lanna Apisukh for NPR

cover caption

toggle caption

Lanna Apisukh for NPR